Saturday, April 4, 2015

Easter Memories: a poem

Easter has always been one of my favorite holidays. It's an opportunity to see my extended family. The weather is usually nice. The trees are becoming green, and the early-season flowers are blooming. I also like it because I think it is less touched by commercialism than other holidays. People still give each other Easter gifts, but it's not taken to the ridiculous extremes of Christmas. And the gifts are mostly chocolate, which is much more welcome than yet another pair of socks, or some game I'll play twice and set on the shelf for the next 100 years. There's no Easter equivalent of Black Friday. People get together on Easter to enjoy each other and to enjoy nature, and that's really how every holiday should be.

As a child, the Easter morning church service was probably my favorite service of the year. The sanctuary, the clothes, the congregation, and the music were always so bright and cheerful. Even as I've gotten older and more cynical about organized religion, and no longer attend an Easter morning church service, I still feel a strong sense of nostalgia about Easter. As organized religion is becoming less popular with each generation in the US, I think my sentiment is one that increasing numbers of young people can probably relate to.

Here's a poem I wrote to try to capture that sentiment.

I love the smell of
Easter lilies.

How it fills
whatever room they’re in.

How it’s enough to
penetrate even my defective nose.

And the central
part it plays in that exultant synergy of Easter morning.

After the Bible
slams shut in a darkened church on Good Friday

and everybody goes
home in a somber mood that lingers on through Saturday,

then early Sunday
morning the sanctuary doors open

The organ

The Easter lilies

The sunrise

streaming through
the stained glass windows

reflecting off the
bright white altar cloth

off the bright
white petals of the Easter lilies

And the small town
church choir sings so strong and smooth I’d swear they were angels